Greg Gard is a very good basketball coach. I admire how well he gets his players to understand the offensive and defensive concepts he's teaching. Like all coaches, Greg has some flaws. And, the need to be addressed - now. The options to fix it aren't rocket science (at least to me). Whether he gets the opportunity to or shows the willingness to fix what needs to be addressed is for others to decide.
Give Greg Gard a consistent philosophy, system, and required skills and he'll coach the crap out of it. We've seen nearly the same defense for 20 years. What Wisconsin runs defensively really requires players to understand positioning on the court. Mentally, it's not easy. But Gard has a philosophy and system and coaches to it well. Players develop the skills required to run it and over time get on the court and have success.
The same can't be said about Wisconsin's offense under Gard.
Offensive Basketball changed 15ish years ago. The definition of a "good shot" changed. The advent of the 30-sec shot clock changed the game. And, Flex-based 3 out 2 in offenses can't consistently get high-quality looks consistently. That includes Wisconsin's Swing Offense.
Bo Ryan, in his later years, all but abandoned The Swing. What you got was some very talented offensive basketball players, leveraging actions that were incorporated in different parts of The Swing to get really good looks.
When Bo left and Gard took over. He immediately went back to The Swing. Fortunately, Gard had some pieces that fit into the Swing (Bronson, Nigel...but other complementary pieces with the skills set to run the Swing) with some consistency. Once Bronson and Nigel left, the offense became a struggle and has remained a struggle.
Why? Gard has a philosophy but doesn't have a system. Gard has kept the consistency on the defensive end and morphed his offensive each year (and at times within the year) to his players' ability and what the opponent was doing.
Isn't that good coaching? Yes and No. Yes if you have a bunch of offensively skilled players. And no, if you don't.
Do you know how so many people have been clamoring about the offensive development of players? How did we use to develop players? Well, that's true. When UW ran The Swing...you'd have solid but not gifted players absolutely master the specific nuances and actions of The Swing for years before they got of the court. As a result, we often had solid players be plus-performers on game day.
When you have guys get 5 post-moved beaten into them every day for 4 years and if you can't consistently execute those moves at the right time from the right place on the court you'd wait another year to get on the court...guess what happened???
Today, we run different stuff every year. What we ran 3 years ago for Trice, is different than what we ran with Johnny, which is different than what we run with Chucky. The result, our more offensively challenged players can't master specific actions and skills required for them to be plus-players over a long period of time. And we end up jacking up 3s at the end of games because we don't have the ability to do much else.
(there's an entire angle on the impact of the transfer portal in here too that I didn't add early and someone else can comment on).
The impact, Gard has given an offensively challenged group 3 different base offenses over the past 3 years, limiting their ability to master it, and has asked them to find a way to score consistently.
So what should Gard do?
Option 1: Develop his offensive system - Gard is an excellent teacher but I don't see him as the creative type. If he had it in him, he would have done it already. So I don't know this is the best solution.
Option 2: Hire an assistant that has an offensive system. That's what Fran McCaffery did. The Read and React isn't his. But I tell you, Iowa's offense is pretty darn good. They get easy looks, the get to the foul line, and they score.
Option 3: Recruit very good offensive basketball players and teach them defense. Connor Essegian and Chucky Hepburn are at minimum interested in playing defense. Get more of them. What ever UW runs offensively, those types of offensively talented players do well. So get more of those and teach them to play defense. If they don't like it or don't learn it...let them hit the portal.
This list isn't exhaustive. We could also get rid of Gard. And there may be others too. Just ramblings on a Sunday AM after another Saturday sh!tshow.
